


boonta's eve, and luckless

by trash_rendar



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Planet Tatooine (Star Wars), Rare Characters, Tatooine Culture (Star Wars), boonta's eve, in-universe new year's eve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:39:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28352559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trash_rendar/pseuds/trash_rendar
Summary: Greedo's had a rough year. A last-minute brush with the equally less-fortunate might change that.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	boonta's eve, and luckless

Life Day had come and gone as had Harvest Day – quietly, in Greedo’s case, without so much as a token holiday booze-up invitation from Dengar. Fine by him. It had been a bad year, anyway, a year of foiled schemes and missed opportunities and a truly unfair amount of rotten luck. A year that had collapsed like that one souffle he’d ordered on Takodana that had collapsed the second its plate arrived in front of him. The chef had laughed. The sound was hoary and mocking, choked with phlegm and bad humor. If this year had been a sound, that laugh would have been it. Good riddance, he thought, and thank goodness it was almost over.

He still bets on the Boonta Eve Classic, of course. Puts his two measly truguts on Quadrinaros, the favorite. But of course, this year the diamond-faced dolt decides to have a power coupling short and never makes it off the starting line. Much, much later, he sullenly throws away what wupiupi he has left on a ruby bliel and slinks away from the bar, and the rest of the cantina scum glued, shouting and hooting, to the race unfolding for the fortieth time that day on the holoscreen.

Mos Espa’s streets are always cold and quiet this time of year, when the moons are high and the soft-bellied farmers and merchants scurry home to their nests and the rough-necked mercenaries crowd cantinas and cabarets to gorge themselves on earthly delights. This they did, allegedly, with the blessing of the Great Hutt Boonta. More practically they did so with paychecks from the Great Hutt Jabba. He sinks onto a bench outside wonders why some people get to have their ‘blessings’ last all year and he doesn’t.

Greedo’s stomach whines. He quaffs some bliel to quiet it.

When the streets are emptied like this, empty of all the loud noises like the _whoosh_ of a speeder or the chatter of massing crowds, the night-borne freeze tends to stick out. So do all the little sounds - the chitter of a needle rat or a doop bug burrowing in the arid dirt; the wind shuffling wraith-like along the sandy avenue; the obnoxious _gurgle-glug_ of gooey red liquid shuffle-sliding down a parched Rodian throat. A soft, timid exhale from a few feet away – this last one makes the pointed tip of Greedo’s ear twitch.

He wipes a dribble of sickly-sweet off his lip with the back of his drink-holding wrist as he turns his head to look. Sitting huddled against the wall of the cantina and the edge of the street, is a Jawa. Its cloak is weatherworn and threadbare; it carries neither bandolier nor webbing, and it hugs its paws across its chest, rocking on its haunches in the corner partition. The brights of its eyes flicker as it blinks, and it sighs again, the sound a feeble rattle from its chest. It hugs itself tighter as the wind blows again through the avenue, whipping sand along edges and corners.

There’s a tin cup by its foot, dented and pitted. It lifts it to give it a shake; its contents jangle lifelessly.

“Sorry, sand-rat. Just blew my last coin.” Greedo gives a final, callous shrug as he turns back to his drink.

The Jawa whines pleadingly. Pitifully, it chitters in its native tongue.

“Does that look like my problem? I’ve got nothing for you – now _scram_!”

He gestures with his glass to emphasize the point; the motion splashes what’s left of the bliel out onto the sand in a gelatinous splat, pulling a strangled growl out of the Rodian’s throat. He’s just about leapt up onto his feet to show that little pest what for when he notices the Jawa has already gathered its cup and shuffled unsteadily out into the street, wrapping its arms even tighter around its trembling little body. The wind howls, and in doing so nearly blows its hood right off its head.

Something twists uncomfortable in Greedo, somewhere normal people – people who aren’t career criminals – might associate with the heart. Somewhere in that cavity where empathy might have been he found something like pity for the poor, hapless creature.

Maybe it had just had a bad year, too.

_Don’t be stupid_ , he tells himself _. It’s not the same at all, not at all_.

“Ah, poodoo,” he says, when he can’t think of a way how.

The little scavenger has managed to cross the avenue, somehow, in the time he’s taken thinking. His legs are much longer, and so it takes less time to make up lost ground. The Jawa senses his approach, and shrinks away with a chirp and a cough, hugging its little cup tightly.

“Hey,” Greedo says, stiffly. “What happened back there, it’s just… it’s been a rough couple of months.”

To that, the Jawa nods, murmuring.

It’s not quite an apology, but it’s something.

“Look, I, uh…” The mouth at the end of Greedo’s snout purses uncertainly for a moment. Finally, he groans and shrugs out of his jacket, holding it out by three fingers. “Look, just take this and go, all right? It’s yours. Happy Boonta and whatever. Just - just get outta here.”

The Jawa looks from him to the jacket and back. It reaches out slowly, uncertainly, expecting a double-cross – then snatches it quicker than a sand tick jumping on a bantha, throwing it over its shoulders (and surely, Greedo thinks despairingly, getting its stink pressed into the liner). It’s not thrilled with it, obviously – would _you_ be, for a hand-me-down made for a sentient twice your size? – but it’s better than nothing.

“Taa baa,” it chirps. Its arms barely fit the sleeves; their ends trail lifelessly in the sand like sidewinders as it shuffles away into an ally, into the dark.

“Yeah, yeah, good deed for the year. Just get lost already,” Greedo mutters. He can already feel the desert cold stabbing through his thin tunic; he turns on his heel to hide the way he all but shoves his fists into his armpits as he stalks away.

_That was stupid,_ he chastises himself, shivering, as if he needs a reminder; the breeze blowing again, cutting deep into his body, is punishment enough. _Why the hell’d I go and do that? That was my favorite jacket too – stupid Jawa stupid Boonta stupid year stupid me, stupid stupid stupid, dank farrik it’s cold out, why the hell did I ---_

“Untinni!”

He turns back with a scowl. That blasted Jawa is waddling towards him again – and what’s this? It’s carrying something in its hands, wadded fists bunching sleeves for mitts – a scrap of cloth, a flag or something—

It’s a vest. Of all things, a vest. Colored an unsightly, obnoxious shade of orange.

“Eugh,” he comments innocently. “What garbage pile did you pick that off of?”

He tries to hide another shiver. He thinks he nails it. But he must not have, because the Jawa is shoving the garment out at him, jabbering insistently.

“W-what, is that supposed to be for _me_? Come on,” Greedo scoffs. Nobody ever just _gave_ him things, after all. Not since he was very young, anyway, and even then, those people weren’t around for very long.

But the Jawa is nodding, now, hopping up and down on the roughspun pooling at its feet. “Boonta!”, it chirps. “Boonta!”

He wants to keep protesting – really, he does. But the instinct dies abruptly on his tongue and leaves as a sigh. “Fine,” he says, bitterly. “If you insist.”

His long, sucker-tipped fingers wrap carefully around the gilet, so as to avoid any grime surely lurking on its exterior. Once his eyes – and nose – have inspected the garment to his satisfaction, he slips his arms through it, pulling it in the front only once to adjust how it drapes on his back. It’s – not a bad fit, actually. And – it wouldn’t happen to be quilted, would it? Either way, it’s already doing an okay job of blocking out the cold – at least for his torso. All in all, it was better than nothing.

“Better than nothing” – he tries the feel of it on his lips. Funny phrase, that. It almost took the sting out of what had been a long, pointlessly-frustrating year.

Maybe ‘better than nothing’ was just what this year needed, in the end.

“Well,” Greedo says, with an indifference he doesn’t quite feel, “it’s definitely an eyesore, but I _guess_ it might make part of a decent outfit, someday.” He scratches behind his crest and swallows; gratitude feels alien on his tongue. “So… thanks, I guess.”

“Taa baa,” the diminutive alien repeats, bowing repeatedly. “Taa baa. Kappa Boonta!”

“Yeah… yeah, you too.”

The Jawa scuttles off across the sands, turned bone-white under the pale light of Tatooine’s three moons. After a second of hesitation, Greedo turns to depart as well. The night seems a little less cold, now, even with an empty pocket and the loss of oversleeves. There’s a warmth here, now, that doesn’t come from ruby bliels or a winning Podrace ticket – or even a whole year of uninterrupted good fortune. Greedo doesn’t know what brought it or how it came to be here, but he hugs the panels of his new gilet a little tighter around himself and decides not to question it.

As he walks down the avenue, skyhoppers streak overhead, trailing explosions of light and streaming color, and Tatooine turns over into the new year. Mos Espa seems to let out its breath all at once; bells ring out, and rough voices holler, and every soul on the planet seems to cry out as one, Boonta! Boonta!

And maybe, just for once, the feeling of it brings a grin to his face. But if it did, he would never admit it – and if his fellow mercs and bounty hunters ever deigned to ask what had happened to his old jacket, he would never say.


End file.
